Tag: Open Mike Eagle

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Hip-hop is a genre caught in a crisis of identity, an art perpetually torn between an unquenchable thirst for swagger and age-old truisms like keep it real and don’t front. Rap demands self-assured confidence, but it also demands honesty, and striking a balance between these two poles is perhaps the single greatest challenge there is. Still, there are artists hard at work doing just that. Serengeti is one of those artists. To figure out how he’s doing it, we might start with the following question:

Who is the “I” in a rap song? And as a follow up: does that “I” have to be real?

The story of addiction always involves a chase, so it’s no surprise that Open Mike Eagle & Paul White’s new video for “Admitting the Endorphin Addiction” features just that. What is of interest here is not so much the chase itself as the thing being chased: a high that looks like the mesmerizing smile of Isis Avalos. Open Mike Eagle plays himself, again unsurprisingly, since the song is from his latest album, titled Hella Personal Film Festival.

“I didn’t ask for this!” growls a hysterical Andrew Lincoln in a monologue sampled on the intro of Doc ILLingsworth’s latest release, which takes its name from the line in question. In the original context, Lincoln plays Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead. The lines are from a pivotal scene where he outright takes control of the group of survivors. “Let’s get one thing straight,” he says, his tone now grim. “You’re staying? This isn’t a democracy anymore.”